Donna Leon - The Golden Egg

‘Bianchini,’ a man’s voice answered on the third ring.

‘Good morning, Signor Bianchini, this is your cousin Roberto’s friend. He suggested I call you.’

‘Ah,’ the man answered, then said, showing he understood that there was no need to discuss the purpose of the call, ‘I thought we could meet for a coffee some time.’

Brunetti looked at his watch. ‘I have a very light schedule this morning,’ he said, not at all certain of this because he had not read the other emails, ‘so we could meet any time you like.’

‘As it happens, I’m free this morning as well. How about that bar near the Ponte dei Greci? I think you know it.’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said neutrally.

‘Eleven?’

‘Good,’ Brunetti said and ended the call with a polite farewell.

Fast work from Pucetti in convincing his cousin to talk to him, Brunetti reflected. He sat for a few moments and thought back to the strange urgency with which Patta had explained the situation in San Barnaba. Patta cared about his family and his job and was unlikely to ask Brunetti for help unless one of the two was at risk. Or perhaps it was nothing more than Patta’s attempt to endear himself to the mayor, as a kind of deposit in the bank of favours.

Was it like this everywhere? Brunetti wondered. Was it all connected, and did power in one place seek automatically to ally itself with power in some other place? And did they protect themselves and one another and to hell with the rest?

Remembering that Rizzardi would have reported on the dead man’s teeth, he scrolled down the list of his messages, but there was no report from the pathologist. It had been two days since the autopsy, and the report should have been filed. ‘“Should have” doesn’t mean anything,’ he said aloud.

He wrote an email, telling Rizzardi the report had not arrived and asking the pathologist to make sure that information about the teeth was included. He was about to send it, when he thought of Rizzardi’s sensibility. He cancelled the last sentence and wrote, instead, that he was particularly interested in whatever had been found about the teeth, for this might end up being the only way to make a physical identification of the dead man. This one he sent. He remembered a friend of his who worked as a musical agent once used the term, ‘Diva Dienst’ to describe the manner in which he was forced to treat certain singers, male as well as female. It was a combination of deference, adulation, and dedication to anticipating their every whim. And here he was, a police commissario, engaged in ‘Doctor Dienst’.

Having read his email, he turned to the papers from his in-box. He was successful with the first three,

which he understood, initialled, and placed at the other side of his desk. But the fourth, a report on the increase in pickpocketing, breaking and entering, and mugging caused Brunetti, quite literally, to run his hands through his hair. It was at this point that Claudia Griffoni, the newest of the other commissari, knocked on his door and came in without waiting to be told to do so. Her elegant legs were today partially visible under a dark green woollen skirt, the rest of her covered by a long beige sweater with a high neck.

‘Hiding?’ she asked.

‘From reality,’ he admitted. He pointed to the papers. ‘I’m just reading about the 28 per cent increase in break-ins in the last six months.’

‘Reported break-ins,’ she corrected him, reminding him that he had to add to that whatever his own experience suggested might be the correct number of people who no longer bothered to report a crime.

‘They had a point, though, when they gave the amnesty,’ she said as she came across the room and sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk. ‘If the prisons are full, and the European Court of Human Rights is screaming at the government, then they have to let some out, if only to make room for the new ones.’

There was nothing he could say. Dockets so full that an appeal case in Venice would have to wait nine years to be heard. Drunk drivers on the mainland who exterminated entire families and were placed under house arrest. Mafia control of the country an ever-expanding curse and, not surprisingly, no government willing to examine the increasing symbiosis between Mafia and politicians.

‘Shall we talk about the weather?’ he asked.

She smiled, and it lightened his heart to see it. ‘I’d love to, but I’m afraid I have to speak about our Black Nemesis.’

‘What’s he done now?’

‘It’s not so much what Scarpa does, is it,’ she asked, ‘as what he makes sure will not be done?’

‘For example?’

‘Foa’s been invited by the Guardia Costiera to spend a week with them, starting the first of the month.’

‘To do what?’

‘To familiarize them with the coastline and the places where it’s possible for small boats to make a landing.’

‘What’s being landed?’

‘Cigarettes,’ she said. ‘But you know that.’

Brunetti nodded.

‘It seems now that they’re also landing people. Or so the Guardia Costiera believes.’

‘From where?’

‘Small boats come across from Albania and Croatia, but it looks like some larger ships are stopping off the coast and putting them on to smaller boats to be brought in.’

‘What kind of ships?’

‘Freighters, tankers. Some of them are so big, it’s easy for them to keep fifty people aboard.’

‘Without anyone noticing?’ he asked.

She smiled again. ‘You think the crew cares what happens? Most of them are illegal, anyway, so they’re probably willing to help people they think are in the same situation.’

‘And they asked for Foa?’

She nodded. ‘The commander did. Foa told me a lot of the men who are assigned here come from the South and don’t know the coastline at all. He’s Venetian, family’s been Venetian since the beginning,’ she said. ‘So he knows the coast like he knows the inside of his pocket and can show them where the likeliest landing places are.’

‘And Scarpa?’

‘He refused the request – refused it when it was made and refused it again when the Captain of the Guardia Costiera repeated it.’

‘Did he give any explanation?’

‘He said that Foa is an employee of the police, not of the Marina, so there is no legal protection for anything he might do if he pilots one of their boats.’

‘What does he expect him to do, run a pirate attack on the boat to Chioggia?’

‘The Lieutenant did not lower himself to discuss details: he was speaking of general principles.’ Disgust filling her voice, she added, ‘Scarpa wouldn’t recognize a principle if it sat down next to him on the vaporetto and hit him over the head.’

‘Not that he’d ever take a vaporetto,’ Brunetti said, and hearing himself say that, he understood everything. ‘It’s because Foa won’t chauffeur him around, isn’t it?’

Griffoni smiled again. ‘Of course. He’s one of the few who stand up to him, won’t take him anywhere unless there’s written authorization from Patta.’

‘Nasty little shit, Scarpa,’ Brunetti said.

‘To say the least,’ she agreed. ‘Except that he’s not little.’

‘I was speaking in the moral sense, I suppose,’ Brunetti said. She nodded in understanding and agreement. ‘So he blocks Foa’s request?’ Brunetti asked. She nodded. ‘Is it important for him?’

‘It certainly can’t hurt him: collaboration with another service, specifically requested to aid them in . . .’ Here Griffoni allowed her voice to take on the metronomic rhythm of politicians . . . ‘the fight against illegal immigration.’

‘The treasurer of a political party steals thirteen million Euros, and the politicians are hysterical about illegal immigration,’ Brunetti said tiredly.